Soyinka releases Emi Lokan's Sea Pyrates

During their 70th anniversary celebration which lasted from Friday to Sunday penultimate weekend, members of the National Association of Seadogs aka Pyrates Confraternity converged on Ikeja, the capital of the former federal capital, Lagos State.

They were a colorful sight to behold in their long-sleeved white shirts, black trousers tucked into white socks, black shoes, belts, red badges and red sashes bearing the emblem of the skull and crossbones which serves as an allegory of the friability of life.

Pyrates weren't in Ikeja for sightseeing. They weren't in Ikeja crawling past the political seat of power in Alausa. In Ikeja, Seadogs reflected on burning national issues and advanced the need to stem the worrying wave of insecurity across the country, calling on authorities to redirect the adrift ship of state away from the yawning precipice. p>

After the jawbone, the brotherhood, in its characteristic way, held a huge procession through the streets of Ikeja on Sunday, singing a medley of songs about the state of the nation, among them the " Emi lokan" which caused a stir on the charts and went straight to number 1 on social media billboards.

Founded at the University College of Ibadan, in 1952, by seven adventurous undergraduate students, known as the Original Seven, the National Association of Seadogs is a charitable and humanitarian brotherhood registered with the Federal Ministry of Home Affairs under the Land (Perpetual Succession) Act Cap 98 with branches throughout the 36 states of the federation, the FCT, and countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan , the Netherlands, Ireland and South Africa.

The original seven include Wole Soyinka, Ralph Opara, Pius Oleghe, Ikpehare Aig-Imoukhuede; Nathaniel Oyelola, Olumuyiwa Awe and Sylvanus U. Egbuche. They formed the Brotherhood of Pyrates to fight against the elitism and class privileges of wealthy students who looked down on poor students in college.

The idea that fertilized the germination of the Brotherhood of Pyrates was found in the novel Treasure Island, written by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) , on the pranks of the pirates.

In crafting the philosophy of their fellowship, the Original Seven adopted the rare but good traits of a few Treasure Island pirates. They have distilled the good traits which include vision, bravery, loyalty, camaraderie, honesty and reliability into their guiding principles called the four cardinal points, and these are: against dying convention, against tribalism ; For humanist ideals and for camaraderie and chivalry as they abandoned evil traits such as deceit, drunkenness, corruption and hypocrisy exhibited by many pirates on Treasure Island< /em>.

The Original Seven also changed the spelling of pirate to Pyrate so that their organization would not be confused with the contemptuous bandit buccaneers who are loosely referred to as pirates. Like Pyrates, which is a nickname, Red Devils is also an example of a curious name carried by the famous Manchester United FC.

The inflection of the name "pirate" to "Pyrate" is not new to intellectual circles; Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah inflected the adjective "Beautiful" in the title of his classic novel to read "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born".

A former Nigerian newspaper, Weekend Concord, owned by the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, once headlined 'A Disaster', when the late Major General Abdulkareem Adisa, former Minister of Public Works and Housing, was arrested for alleged coup plotting.

Weekend Concord editor, Oga Mike Awoyinfa, was specifically responsible for writing the newspaper's headlines. He also dropped the headline, “Drugs? Never mind Alaafin,” when someone in Oyo's late Alaafin entourage, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, was caught with drugs in the UK.

According to the organization's website, www.nas-int.org, NAS closed all of its student branches on campus to this day on July 28, 1984, when the despicable activities of Copycat organizations disguised themselves as fraternities mushroomed on Nigerian campuses.

The song, Emi lokan, was not NAS' first composition to ridicule bad leaders in Nigeria. They had sung "The Ogoni Do Not Suffer" to denounce the degradation of the Ogoni land, they also sang "Kenule Saro-Wiwa" to mourn the murder of the Ogoni activist, just as they sang "The Universities of Chicago and of Toronto" to criticize the controversies surrounding the credentials of All Progressives Congress presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari.

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